Miramar Approves 6-month Ban On New Churches

City Wants To Review Use Of Shopping Plazas For Public Assembly

June 8, 2006|By Georgia East Staff Writer

MIRAMAR — New houses of worship have been temporarily banned in Miramar under a moratorium city commissioners approved Wednesday night.

The ban will affect future storefront churches and other "public assembly places" such as nonprofit theaters and auditoriums for up to six months. City officials say they need the time to examine whether there are too many in one area and whether new design and parking standards should be established.

There are about 40 churches in the city; about half of them are storefronts on the east side, near State Road 7.

Before the meeting, City Commissioner John Moore said the city has to be careful when they reexamine the issue.

"We want balanced growth and we need commercial development," said Moore. "But we don't want the city to have a reputation as being unfriendly to religious institutions."

City planners say they fear any more churches could create an economic imbalance because houses of worship don't pay taxes and generally don't generate weekday traffic for existing businesses. Similar restrictions have been put in place in Lauderdale Lakes and Hallandale Beach.

Among entities defined as public assembly places are churches, nonprofit theaters and auditoriums. But church leaders have said they felt singled out because the majority of places that come under that definition are churches. They also say strip plazas are often affordable sites to start out, at a time when the costs of rent and property continue to rise.

"There's really nothing left," said pastor Lue Jackson of Cathedral Faith of Worship in Miramar, which operates out of a strip plaza. "Everything is soaring."

But the city said some businesses in the plazas would prefer not to be near houses of worship.

While federal law allows cities to regulate locations of houses of worship, the restrictions must be limited and applied equally to all faiths.

In 2000, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, designed to give religious groups power to fight local zoning ordinances. Under the act, the federal government can sue a city if it finds discrimination.

Jackson said although the ban does not affect churches already there, he's concerned. "They're saying they don't want to immediately regulate our worship, but everything else said they do."

In other matters, the city commission took a step towards lending the South Broward Drainage District $2.3 million to fix lake banks out west by authorizing the city manager to draft an agreement between the district and the city.